bed of the river, scatter over an area the size
of New Jersey, spawn, and grow fat on the
aquatic pastures. As the water recedes, the
fish struggle back to the main channel, falling
prey to spear, net, and trap.
But poor flood years and overfishing have
cut into fish reproduction. "Sometimes twenty
men hardly sufficed to lift one trap full of
fish, and twice a day at that," said an elder
of the Bozos, a people known for their skilled
fishermen. "But now," he added sadly, "all
we do is patrol our traps every three or four
days for a few pounds of fish each time."
The Bozos showed me a fish equipped to
survive drought conditions. This species of
lungfish, Protopterus annectens, is able to
remain behind on dried-up land. Curled up in
a protective cocoon of mud and mucus,
breathing with its lungs, it waits-if neces
sary for several years-until the water re
turns. Then it switches over from lungs to
gills. The Bozos, however, doubted my ex
planation of the fish's survival technique.
One insisted, "He falls from heaven with the
first rainstorm of the season."
Capitaine a High-ranking Fish
I accompanied Bayon Dienapo, head of a
fishing cooperative, on an inspection tour of
his fiefdom. He was obviously a ranking
Bozo, and I addressed him jokingly as mon
capitaine. The pun pleased him, for capitaine
is also the name of the Niger's biggest fish,
Lates niloticus, the Nile perch.
Being a "big fish," however, made Bayon
no less vulnerable to the river's fluctuations.
"In three consecutive years I planted 20 acres
of rice on the floodplain, but all I got were
withered stalks," he lamented. "This year for
the first time I did not plant, for lack of seed
and faith. And then the Niger came back in
strength. Unfortunate man that I am!"
But no one can remain pessimistic for long
in the market at Mopti, the delta's commercial
hub. Its everyday haggle swells at the mid-
week market day to a pandemonium of noises
and colors (pages 164-5). On the riverbank I
squatted with women bargaining for brown
balls of dried onions from Bandiagara, and
mingled with Arab traders hawking marble
like salt slabs from Taoudenni, in Mali's
desert hinterland. And as I watched pirogues
disgorge the Niger's fish, it was easy to over
look the decline from plenty to penury.
French Bread for an African Bone
In a good year Mali's catch of fish from the
Niger and its tributary the Bani totals about
185,000 tons. Some of this moves through the
processing complex in Mopti, built under the
supervision of Andre Szabo, a Romanian
born Israeli who works for the United Na
tions. Proudly Andre gave me a tour of cold
storage rooms and smoke ovens. We paused
in a nearly-completed restaurant where
diners can sample smoked capitaine, a
delicacy vying with smoked salmon.
Andre is ever on the lookout for new spe
cies for canning, and he let me be the first
"customer" to try Alestes macrolepidotus. It
was handed to me straight from the oven
with the promise that it tasted "something
like herring." The privilege was painful, for
I half-swallowed a bone.
Andre rushed me to a baker's shop, driv
ing through the market throngs at ambulance
speed. Never before had I such kind words
for the colonial legacy from the Seine. French
bread, baked by an African, did the trick.
After the rains many farmers looked for
ward to bumper crops of rice, millet, and
sorghum-but then they had to worry about
losses to weaverbirds and locusts. They
fought their own battle against the birds
with slingshots and scarecrows, while an
international control team went after the
locusts by poisoning their breeding grounds.
More than a hundred miles northeast of
Mopti, I traveled over many lake beds that
were dry despite the new rains. But beneath
INLINE WITH THEIR FAITH, reverent Moslems bow for midday prayers at
the mud mosque in Mopti. Protruding wooden beams provide permanent scaffolding
for constant repairs. Fanatic Berber converts to Islam made forays into West
Africa in the 11th century, but proselytizing traders were mainly responsible for
the spread of the religion. Today the numerous spires and fluted walls of mosques
mark an important unifying force along most of the Niger's five-nation course.
169